Tesla CEO Elon Musk said hydrogen is “the most dumb thing I could possibly imagine for energy storage.”
Musk has been asked by the FT reporter if he thought hydrogen had a role to play in accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels.
“No. I really can’t emphasize this enough — the number of times I’ve been asked about hydrogen, it might be … it’s well over 100 times, maybe 200 times,” said Musk, obviously exasperated. “It’s important to understand that if you want a means of energy storage, hydrogen is a bad choice.”
“It does not naturally occur on Earth, so you either have to split water with electrolysis or crack hydrocarbons,” he told the Financial Times. “When you’re cracking hydrocarbons, you really haven’t solved the fossil fuel problem, and the efficiency of electrolysis is poor. So you really are spending a lot of energy to split hydrogen and oxygen.”
“And if you have to liquefy hydrogen, oh my God,” he continued. “The amount of energy required to make hydrogen and turn it into liquid form is staggering. It is the most dumb thing that I could possibly imagine for energy storage.”
Before EcoPolitica wrote that, the largest high-temperature electrolyser, which was installed on its site by the German metallurgical giant Salzgitter AG, showed a record efficiency — the electrical efficiency reached 84%.
